Alberto Santofimio

Alberto Santofimio (17 June 1942-) was Minister of Justice of Colombia from 7 August 1974 to 10 July 1975, succeeding Jaime Castro Castro and preceding Samuel Hoyos Arango. He was a member of the Colombian Liberal Party, and he had ties to drug cartels.

Biography
Alberto Santofimio Botero was born in Ibague, Tolima, Colombia on 17 June 1942, and he attended Our Lady of the Rosary University before becoming a lawyer. In 1974, he was named Minister of Justice by President Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, serving for less than one year. Santofimio befriended the smuggler Alfredo Gomez Lopez and met Pablo Escobar in 1976; he secured Gomez's release from prison. In 1981, he attempted to convince Escobar to run for president, but Escobar's campaign failed. That same year, the three men were thrown out of the New Liberalism party. Rather than run for president, Santofimio supported Lopez's campaign for re-election. In 1990, he supported the late Luis Carlos Galan's campaign manager Cesar Gaviria's presidential candidacy rather than run for president; he was suspected of being involved with the Medellin Cartel gunmen behind Galan's assassination. In 2007, he was sentenced to 24 years in prison for his role in Galan's death, and he was also accused of assisting in the murder of two other people at the same rally.